92% of Branding SharePoint is CSS, So Why Are You Living in a Master Page?

So, seriously? Why is all the hype about master page this and master page that. All of your branding should be coming from CSS! Master pages have their place in the world and are certainly useful. Just make sure all the pretty is in your CSS file.

Welcome session attendees and anyone else who happens to wander on this page. This blog entry is a post session review of resources mentioned and code used in our Bring Sexy Back to SharePoint and Gaining Total Control of Your Sites with Data View Web Parts sessions from April 2014 SPTechCon in San Francisco. Continue reading SPTechCon San Francisco April 2014 Session Review→

Thanks for attending our sessions!

SPTechCon rocked!

SPTechCon is winding down now in Boston, and we had an awesome experience sharing our knowledge with attendees. Heather and I have created this post with resources for attendees of our sessions (and other curious lurkers). Continue reading SPTechCon 2012 in Boston→

If you are headed to SPTechCon in Boston this July, please stop by one of our sessions and say hello! The conference is running a registration special through June 15th. Save $400 bucks. 🙂

Our sessions…

Tuesday, July 24, 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM

Creating Custom Views with any HTML and JavaScript – It’s Magic

DUSTIN MILLER
See how easy it is to bend SharePoint’s XSL-based list view (a.k.a. the Data View Web Part) to your will, creating a view that generates any HTML and JavaScript your geeky heart desires. And now, learn how to do it without using SharePoint Designer. With just a Web browser, you’ll learn the secrets of creating magical, powerful and totally customized list views. Web designers and developers: Don’t miss this session!

Wednesday, July 25, 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM

Learn How to Put HTML5 in Your SharePoint Master Page

DUSTIN MILLER and HEATHER SOLOMON
HTML5 is the new Web hotness. If it seems daunting, or you think you have to scrap what you have now and start over, then check out this class. Learn how to easily convert your existing SharePoint master page to HTML5 while creating better structure for your content. And yes, everyone will still be able to access your site!

Wednesday, July 25, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM

Make SharePoint Look Good!

HEATHER SOLOMON
Master pages are so yesterday. The real key to branding SharePoint is CSS. Update SharePoint controls, create different branded versions of your Web site, and write crafty CSS statements that override inline SharePoint styles. Become best friends with descendent selectors, pseudo selectors and attribute selectors. We will round out the class with taking a look at the many things CSS3 has to offer.

Then, I took the wheel to show how you can get any kind of markup you want from any SharePoint list. Creating a new view of the announcements list (Insert → Data View → Empty Data View), I wiped out the data view and replaced it with my own custom “Baseline DVWP.xsl” file to render the Announcements list with HTML5 markup.

Back At It Again … More CSS Goodness (Tuesday, 4:00 PM)

Based on Heather’s new approach to writing CSS for SharePoint, she showed several samples of writing style statements that simply have a stronger specificity score/weight than what is being applied to a SharePoint component. For example:

a[id$=editPageLink] {
background: red;
}

The above style statement targets the “Edit this Page” link in a SharePoint wiki page by looking for specific text at the end of the anchor’s ID value. There is no need to track down the style statements used by SharePoint and make copies of these long style selectors; that just adds more baggage to your CSS file. Instead use a tool like Firebug in Firefox to identify and build your own selector. Heather showed style statement samples for editing table views, controlling a web part based on location and a quick trick for controlling form inputs based on type.

I was super pumped to do this session. I will blog more about it real soon, but I have come up with a new, and in my view, wildly efficient way to create custom views of your SharePoint data with XSL. While I work feverishly on a detailed post discussing my new “Magic Data View Builder” template, here’s a quick recap:

First, I demonstrated replacing a List View Web Part’s “XSL Link” property with the URL to a copy of the Magic Data View Builder template, which I uploaded to a document library. On refresh, you’re given a starter template for your own custom list view.